Saturday, August 1, 2009

Needed: A PAUSE Option....

Well, this is shaping up to be an interesting day. To start with I seem to have had about 10 hours of sleep. That'll revive a girl. And secondly, I don't seem to have anything I have to do today.

I know, I know, and no it's not the Apocalypse. It just happened, honest.

No riding today, I just rode the last six days and there is a wedding out there.

E-mail doesn't seem all that much and can be dispatched quickly, tho more people are onto my secret working on the weekend to catch up theory, and tend to answer back more that they used to, still not so much.

I believe my Boss is thinking, once he wakes, which won't be for some hours, that writing is on the agenda. We do have the Plan to harvest a frame of honey and extract it for the Fair next week, but that is coming in under Fun, and not so much work.

A day for cleaning basements, cleaning out cupboards and drawers, and doing SOMETHING about the pile of clothes that is the lone closet in the house. A day for putting in order all the secret places, that no one but myself sees.

I think it is good to look in those Secret Places every so often, and make sure they are neat, tidy, workable and something that feels good, rather than bits that hang about on the edges adding wee bits of stress you never notice, but always seem to be there.

Life, and work can get pretty hectic. I've been talking this week with people in the same sort of boat. We've come to the conclusion that what we need is either extra days, hours or perhaps a PAUSE button, where you could push the PAUSE button and catch UP.

I think how absolutely serene it would be, if only for a day, to get the Inbox down to zero, to have every little thing packaged up, sent out, to get the To Do List ALL crossed off.

To look in the basement, closet and cupboards and not think "I so need to DO something about that"

Beez, I have found Nature's Miracle to be like putting water on cat pee smells. I have had much more luck with Bio-Matic or Urine Off. Haven't had to use either for a long time, hope I haven't jinxed myself.

L, what a wonderful day, hope it continues the way you have planned or unplanned.

Hurrah for Pauseday. All those cupboard issues and piles stress me out, too. I've got several going at the momnet, and every time I think about them I just kind of shut down and ignore them. Good on your for Attacking.

I think an extra day ought to be called something vaguely menacing, like Thromva'ar. Something that sounds like we should all be dancing round bonfires in war paint and singing songs to Norse gods.

Sign me up for a pause button. Can I use it to read the pile of waiting books, or do I have to clean? Mind you, there's no shortage of lurking unclean bits here. And somewhere between 30-60 guests arriving from 3pm. Oh well, they know not to look at the house!

Oh, laundry. I need to do that, too. I think if you want to avoid Mondays, just look for the "Skip" button. And if you find it, let me know where it is!

My closets are pretty organized - clothes in type and then chromatic order - it's the public part of the house that's untidy. The bookshelves are overflowing, but so be it. I'm just waiting for the elves to build me that library. In the meantime, my clever strategy is to *buy more books!* Just to throw them off. Ahahaha.

You're supposed to hit re-start? Dang.New subject - has anyone read the entries on Texts From Last Night? They are often horrifying and disgusting peeks into the lives of people younger (or with way more stamina) than me. People who drink way too much. And do everything way too much. Many are hilarious. They make me feel like a geezer, and I fear for our planet when I read them, but I can't stop!

Dan, if it looks likely to happen, let me know if you need a moving company recommendation. The people we used to move back here from the UK were really good. I'm not sure whether or not they have a branch over here yet or not (at the time we moved, they didn't), but I know they have a network of companies they use over here. They might could suggest something, I'm thinking.

Pause button god yes please, I have exactly one week to pack up 4 years of my life and ship it to new jersey while going to ork and 2 classes and trying to find a place to live for the last week of classes since my genious complex decided to end leases a week before classes end...and it's student only housing...... and where i was supposed ot crash bailed. *proceeds to pull all hair out of head*

I walked out there! In the sun! 90 degrees and huuumid from this morning's 1 1/2 inches of precip. We just turned the sprinkler system off until further notice - not even going to rely on the rain shut-off. It LOOKS beautiful out there - clean sky, fluffy little clouds, everything green and blooming... got to take a picture. From inside the house.And then refill the hummingbird feeders.

Janet- thanks. I'm going to try the Urine Off. The downstairs tenant in the place we bought apparently let his cats use pretty much everywhere as a litterbox (he was kind of the neighborhood crazy cat guy).

We get it out of one place and then notice it more in another. Like...er...herding cats.

My button is going to be called a Mental Health Moment, the moment to be as long or short as needed. It can be used for stretchy time, to turn off annoying people or animals and, if Dan would just get to work on it, a matter transporter as well. I'd like to say you have prompted me to do some cleaning and organizing Fiends, but no (looks inside) no desire to clean or organize today.

Ah, change is good. (I didn't think it looked very college dorm at all, actually-- just comfy. But fair enough. :) )

Question is: is this enough to inspire me to paint the guest room tomorrow? Have had the door shut for weeks, ignoring it because it looks like a construction zone. I can;t bear it, yet can't move all the furniture back till I paint. Mmm, vicious circle.

I am taking a mental health moment RIGHT NOW. As I type, I'm brushing off my friends (the same friends I see every Friday and Saturday night) to take a mental health moment. Apparently, Repo: The Genetic Opera was made just for this moment.

I also found out that a store down the street has a bunch of Method candles in my favorite Method scent, Sweet Water. I'm thinking of hoarding them.

FabLo:

I haven't had the "living in the dorm room" feel since I lived in a dorm room. Since then, my apartments have been equal parts little girls' room, cozy cottage, and creepy Addam's Family hideaway cottage.

How are all your Bengals dealing with the moving and cleaning of stuff? Except for laundry and dishes, Tangwyn gets real nervous when I'm cleaning and moving furniture around. Well, at least when moving furniture around.

I have found that the pause button I do have makes things worse. It pauses me but the world around me just seems t speed up and leave more for me to do when some huge hand reaches up from the ground and slams down on the reset button.

Jack is having fainting spells. Totally weird and worrying. We called the doctor. The doctor was a jerk. We tested him for juvenile diabetes. Negative. According to our examinations, he is dehydrated. I want to go to bed but I do not want to leave him.

That sounds awful, Emily. Dehydration is no fun, but easily treated. As for the incident at the birthday party, are you sure the correct word is "friend?" Also, have the parents of the other kids at that party been told what happened?

I hope everything turns out okay!!! I know when I was in high school I had some problems with severe dehydration, because I felt I was too busy to drink water, and I live in Florida. Usually, after I cooled off, drank a bunch of tea and water, and nibbled on some toast I began t feel better right away. Another friend would pass out in school sometimes. I think she id it three or four times a year, but now she's married with kids and was totally okay. He's probably fine, but sometimes it's okay to hover!

ariandalen-

My cats think it's awesome when I rearrange, but neither of them are bengals. Every once in a while Miss Alpha cat will show her displeasure by peeing or throwing up on the floor, but other than that they think most of the things I do are fascinating. I'm their entertainment.

Emily; In all seriousness, if he was a participant and had excessive amounts of liquid (any kind) forced down his throat he could be overhydrated. There are some common symptoms (oddly enow) with dehydration, including the fainting.

Water toxicity does happen to otherwise healthy people, contrary to what most web sites say. The military has had to educate drill sergeants and other training personnel because they force so much water down us all the time (to avoid dehydration) that there have been a number of overhydration cases.

Thanks for the tip, Lys - I was thinking it would be perfectly ironic if he were dehydrated after having the water shoved in his face ... but the thing was, he had gone so incredibly long during the day without having anything to eat; and then when he DID eat something, it was pure sugar. But he wouldn't let us check his blood sugar ... he seemed okay after drinking water last night, and then munching on some popcorn (which, I know, was not the best idea for a snack, because it's full of salt, but he kept drinking water and definitely needed something of substance to eat). Oh, and watching "Help!" with the Beatles. Jack has a Thing for the Beatles, particularly Paul McCartney. But he's beating Ben into mashed potatoes right now, so I take it he's okay. Thanks so much for the support, Fiends. I love you all.

And Ariandalen, they are his friends. They were just totally acting up last night at someone's fourteenth birthday party. It's a group of kids ages twelve to fifteen, and they can get nutty sometimes. No, we haven't mentioned this to the mom and dad, but probably will. We do NOT want this to happen again.

I think you're supposed to eat salt if you're going to do things that might make you dehydrated. My father was a football player in high school and college, and he talked about having to take salt pills before playing. I think it helps you retain water, but I'm not sure. Maybe that made him feel better?

If you do get dehydrated you tend to be short of salt & sugar, esp. if you've been sweating or oeeing a lot. It's why water with both in is better than plain water if you've been sick a lot - so sugar followed by salt, plus liquids, would probably help, if it was dehydrationj.

Oh, oh I know this one! ;) You can have too much water, if you don't eat enough. It's about balancing electrolytes, many of which are salts, and which regulate hydration.

I'd been taught this in a mountaineering training course, but later forgot, and was forcibly reminded during a hike out of Grand Canyon. I was drinking loads of water but feeling weaker and weaker, and puzzled about it. My dad asked if I'd been eating, which I hadn't, having run out of food on the last couple miles. He gave me the rest of his trail mix, and I was better within minutes. Duh.

All those sports drinks are magic when you're doing strenuous exercise because they're water and electrolytes.

And in another duh moment, I seem to have run myself into exhaustion: just slept two long nights with a long nap in between, feeling weak and nearly delirious all in between. More human now.

Thanks for the tips on salt! That's a good point about water retention. Jack is back to his old self today - rocking out on the bass and drums, beating Ben to a pulp, leaping to the computer as soon as the chair is vacated ... though he was himself last night, too, just ... sicker. Every time I offered to check his blood sugar he flipped me off and/or told me to shut up.

Emily, i'm glad jack was ok. the other parents should be advised what happened so talks can happen with the kids.

and about loving the beatles, i'm btigin my fingernames waiting for this beatles rock band guess what my early christmas present is...

huzzah for loving the clean quiche you inspired my greatly yesterday as i reduced the pile of laundry to a just the rugs, which i have to take to a laundromat to do in the big washers. AND, i did all of the dishes. Boy gets to clean the counters as i don't deal with bleach, i'm allergic. we have a system, i do most of the organizing and he does the bleachy/chemical stuff while i'm at work so i don't get migraines.

I am definitely on pause today. Party was great. I love getting a bunch of friends who don't know each other together and having them meet each other and have it all work. I think we ended up with about fifty people, eating and drinking all over the yard; in and out of the pool; hanging out till all hours. No band this year, but Ted the Fiddle brought his fiddle and we had spoons and guitar and tambourine and penny whistle....

And the weather gods smiled. Torrential rain the night before, and again at 5am this morning, and even, at 8pm, two miles away, but we stayed dry! (I think that's a first for this party, which seems to get rained on even in droughts).

So today is about slowly doing the clean up, and eating left-overs....

And, Lorraine, that recipe for curing dehydration (drink the hydrating stuff until it no longer tastes good) is exactly how I use Gatorade, which I detest. If it tastes good, I know I'm way too short on electrolytes.

the same folks that make Emergen-Cee packets of Vitamin C and Magnesium to be added to water also make packets of Electro-Mix with (reads label): magnesium, manganese, potassium, calcium and chromium. Mix into a qt of water. Way cheaper than buying sports water, easy to carry in a pocket. And no sugar. We sue a lot of them in summer, especially when doing electrical work in the middle of August for the Philly Folk Fest.

Hello, all. Hope everyone's having a lovely Sunday. I am so proud: I got my vacuum cleaner to stop with the random shutoffs. (It had been shutting itself off, randomly.) Go me with the taking-things apart, cleaning the parts, and then putting them back together. Woot. :P

So does anyone want to do a CD swap? I have CDs to swap which I don't want any more. Specifically, these:

Dabbler: 2 Musos = Band So with more than two, you Definitely had a band going. :)

Emily, et al:Silly me! How could I have forgotten the other half of the equation, the electrolytes n potassium n stuff! Yes, that is key--the salt is probably what allowed his body to balance.

Hearing people describe various beverages reminds me of my introduction to RenFaire some 30 years ago. "Here, have some lemonade from the Special cask...you look hot" "Ewwww! That tastes Terrible!" "ah, never mind. You don't need it. Have the other lemonade instead."

The Celt Camp always had two very large containers of cold lemonade running, in back where patrons couldn't see. If you stopped sweating or had other scary symptoms, you drank the salted lemonade until it tasted bad to you! I loved those guys...

Pauseday! I LOVE it! re: salt. At world market yesterday, I found a dark chocolate candy bar with sea salt. Total Yum. (Snuck it into the movies tra la.)

Today, I ventured up to Parma and bought a used parrot cage from a lady who happens to run a chin rescue group and I got to meet her herd of chins...sooooooo fantastico...in a month, after my guy has settled in, we will see if any of her wayfaring chinnies are a good match for him. It's just so...wrong...to have one of anything if there's a choice, I think.

I held one of her little guys for a long time and when I came home, was v. curious as to how my Sebastian would react...he loved it! He was all over me and let me give him many scritches even on his chest (which he has never tolerated before.) I think it might be a good sign!

Arian: True...chins are social little beasties, tho...and a group of them is evidently called a "herd." Too funny...They remind me a LOT of the little mogwais from that movie the name of which is escaping me right now...

Dabbler: its just a matter of time before my chin DOES need rescue! :D

Ah, Ms. Fabulous and fellow Fiends, I have been perusing an interesting site tonight. It has assorted skulls and skeletons and other deathly things. I think many of us would like many of the items this site has to offer. If another Fiend has previously pointed a long finger at the above site, well, it must have been many moons ago so I point at it again.

I love those days when nothing in particular is planned. And then, of course, I have to go spoil it all by planning what I'll get done...at least until I run into something to read anyway. :)

And a pause button would be a wonderful thing. It depresses me slightly that my boss and I tend to take days off just so we can catch up with all the domestic stuff (and not a lot of it is fun) we don't/can't get done because we don't have time in the course of a normal week. Being able to pause now and then would be fabulous.

The best storm came last night! Woke me at 1:00am, non-stop lightning, thunder, lots of rain, all anyone could want. Funny thing, there was nothing when I went to bed, and I wake to this, and severe watches...

Weather Girl should have caught that one!

Boss called me to make sure I wasn't missing it, which was nice, as the power was out, and my glasses were Way Down Stairs, and it was scary, so he stayed with me until I found them, and we watched lightning from out respective homes.

I enjoy storms a bit more now that my gutter is fixed. Still have nightmares about water coming in everywhere, though. I take it to mean that the two are unrelated. Stick that in your pipe and smoke it, Freud!

I think dabbler would be the one to confirm or refute this for sure (she said, coming in late to the Freud discussion), but I seem to remember learning in psych class that these days psychologists regard classic Freud more for its historical value than for its usefulness in treatment. It's pretty well agreed that while Freud was unquestionably a pioneer, he was also wrong about an awful lot of things-- and had an alarmingly misogynist bias; Freudian approaches to therapy have come a long way since then, and I think it's more his method of treating patients than his original theories which have stood the test of time. (So if he makes you mad, Emily, it's because you're a smart reader. :) )

In the "never a dull moment" category, I met with some folks today who wanted to hear about how foodbanking works, so they can set up a foodbanking system in the Philippines. The lady turned out to be from the Filipino Legislature. I believe she's the Chair of the (national) Food Security Committee for the Philippines.

I promise I was polite, friendly and diplomatic. International relations between the US and the Philippines are still intact. President Obama should have no cause to call. Really.

Jess, that's a pretty good summary about Freud, especially the misogyny.When I was in grad school, multiple many moons ago, I was in a program that called itself 'Neo-Freudian.'These years later, I find that some of the insights about the psyche, esp the ideas of Conscious and Unconscious mechanisms of thought/action, stick with me usefully, but most of the rest I rarely remember or think about.

I like Jung better...especially the idea of the Collective Unconscious and the existence of Archetypes who may bridge individual and collective experience, but that's just what I've been playing with currently.

And I love Jung's concept of Image/dream/myth as a way of exploring the world/one's self. (now if there are any silent real Jungians in Fiendom, I must apologize, as I am far from an expert...)

Well, Jess, she did take my picture and tell me I would be famous in the Filipino legislature, so that could be quite fun!

The crazy part was that somehow no one told me that she was that high up the emergency food chain, and I just thought she was like the people I talk to every day, who want to set up a single pantry, only bigger. I had no idea that she is the author of this legislation and the primary mover of the work in the Philippines. Great conversation, and I think I was helpful, but I'd've prepped differently if I'd realized the level at which she wanted to talk.

Happily I was able to point her to some good resources. The project sounds a like a great challenge. Set up a foodbanking system for a whole country? Hmmm! For the time, feeding the hungry in developing nations is out of my league. I'm just taking care of 14 counties in Illinois. I'm busy enough!

Jess, No problem with the 10,000 Maniacs... I wouldn't think of tearing them out of EmilyLady's hands, even if I wanted them. Which I don't! I'll see what I have and talk to you on FB (once I get a chance to sort out some stuff we never listen to, or have dups of.)

I much prefer Jung too. Got one of his books here. Somewhere. Ani, I love that the she wants to set up a food bank for the Philippines. I wish every country/state would do that.Ooh, postie just put a whole pile of mail in our box. *skips out to collect mail*

Seems to be raining only at night here lately - wouldn't life be fantastic if it rained every night and then we always had sunshine in the day? Well, there are those of you who like the day rain. But I like the night rain! Rhode Island gets too much rain.

I'm so behind too! Work is crazy for me too, but I have to leave for book club in an hour.

Yesterday I spent much time fighting with the ticketmaster website, and I seem to have won tickets to a music festival - it would have been nice to have been told before the festival happened.

I've always found the thought of reading Freud or Jung or other such clever things a bit intimidating. But intrigued by your chatter I'm going to add it to my list of fun things to do up to and in my 30th year! Am embracing the concept of a very long bd celebration too, started in April and my bd isn't until end of October - well it is a milestone!

Hi! *waves* Home briefly (til Thursday), trying to get caught up on stuff. No chance on twitter, skimmed comments.

Did see Jess writing:"I think an extra day ought to be called something vaguely menacing, like Thromva'ar. Something that sounds like we should all be dancing round bonfires in war paint and singing songs to Norse gods."

Oddly enough, that's what I've been doing for the past few days, or near enough. But all the days still had their ordinary names, most of which come from Norse gods anyway.

Why yes, I was at Pennsic. How could you tell??? *grin* I'm going back on Thursday afternoon.

*yawn* I drove home from Pittsburgh early this morning (3 hr), stopped off at home to start a load of laundry and check on the cat, and was at work by quarter to eleven. I had planned to work until 6, but may not make it that long. Couch and cat are calling!

Oddly enough, I never had the desire to make the pilgrimage to Pennsic. We were at the first three Gulf Wars outside of Hattiesburg, MS. I get such odd looks when I where my Gulf Wars III t-shirt, especially when I'm not thinking and wear it on Memorial Day or Veteran's Day. We did make it to 25th Year Celebration; it was only an hour to an hour and a half southwest of us in Burnet, TX.(for those of you who are wondering what the heck we're talking about, these are Society for Creative Anachronism events.)